Kerlin Gallery is justifiably excited to present A Musical Instrument, the first solo exhibition in Ireland by Justin Fitzpatrick.
The title A Musical Instrument references a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in which the pagan god Pan transforms a reed from the riverbed into a panpipe, not knowing the pain caused by ‘Making a poet out of a man’. Music-playing, and by extension, all creative expression, is positioned as something mediumistic, involuntary, and yet also a source of struggle. In Fitzpatrick’s paintings, however, it also appears to foster a kind of connectivity: spines become injected with musical notes; bodies seem to communicate through diagrammatic wave particles; tangled webs of veins, nerves, and arteries imply a porosity of self, a consciousness that expands beyond our physical bodies.
In Fitzpatrick’s paintings, figurative forms appear enmeshed within complex systems of processes, sounds, memories, and ideas. Bodies morph into musical and mechanical apparatus, while objects become animated or anthropomorphic. In one painting, a human heart is swapped for a glass armonica, an 18th-century instrument with melancholic tones once thought to induce madness. In another, a masked figure plucks at the strings of a suspension bridge, becoming a self-playing Aeolian harp.
A Musical Instrument by Justin Fitzpatrick runs at the Kerlin Gallery from 25 Octobr to 23 November. Opening Reception: Thursday 24 October, 6–8pm
Feature Image: The Glass Armonica (Dying at my music), 2024, oil on linen, oak frame, 183 x 143 cm framed
